MANAGING STRATEGIC USE OF IT (Lai Min Hou TP028482)
Working Inward: Business to Employee Building an Intranet One of the strategic uses of IT in Yahoo is the building of Intranet. A company intranet is a computer network that uses Internet Protocol technology to share information, operational systems or computing services within an organization (Mitchell, 2014). Just like other well known organization such as Microsoft and Google, Yahoo has also have their own intranet within the organization. According to (business editors, 2001), Yahoo is one of the companies that hold partnership with IntraNet Solutions(R), Inc which offers web content management solutions to their customers. (http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.apiit.edu.my:2048 http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.apiit.edu.my:2048/docview/446056018 /docview/446056018/516324918F9 /516324918F994 94 DF3PQ/3?accountid=46052)) DF3PQ/3?accountid=46052 The building of the intranet in Yahoo is extremely useful for communication and collaboration between the employees. For example, discussion groups can be held through the intranet. There may be a lot of ideas from the employees but there is no way wa y for them to express and communicate. By having the intranet, their ideas can be expressed through the web and communicated among their colleagues. The employees from different apartment may have different perspectives with the ideas and their opinions can be exchanged and discuss together to produce a better product or idea. Other than that, the using of Intranet allows Yahoo to distr ibute valuable information among the employees in a fast and efficient effici ent manner. Intranet can make sure the correct information is distributed to the right people at the right ri ght time. Below shows the sample architecture architectu re of an intranet:
Fostering a sense of belonging MORE Another importance of having intranet within the organization is to cultivate the sense of belonging. As time goes by, intranet is evolving into very important enterprise structure. The intranet portrays as an organization’s corporate mission and values, internal forms, rules, processes and internal news and feedbacks. In any medium or large organization, there will be s everal departments which separate the employees and there are better ways for them to communicate except using intranet. In this case, intranet is the only platform for them to make connection within the company. It provides the foundation for creating corporate culture and climate by giving a means for communication and creating communities. Intranet will provide an environment and atmosphere in the workplace that makes them feels at home when they are working in the organization. For example, by implementing the internal discussion forum, the employees are able t o express their feelings and opinions in a professional manner. Not only that, they also can share their personal experience and stories to others. By doing this, the employees will feel that the y are part of the big family within the company, which in turn, enhances trust among them.
Working Outward: Business to Customer Jumping to a new experience curve Jumping to a new experience curve is one of the st rategic uses of IT in Yahoo. Yahoo Search Technology (YST) is the technology that created by Yahoo. When visitors conduct a search on a site that uses Yahoo Search Technology (YST), Yahoo collects information from that experience in the same manner as if the search were conducted on Yahoo directly. (https://info.yahoo.com/privacy/uk/yahoo/search/) In Yahoo, the organization uses YST as the basis for the search service and moving across a series of experience curves. At the beginning, Yahoo search is just a search engine that available online for user to find what they are looking for on the web. At that point of time, Yahoo is s till using Google’s search engine for results. Until 2003, Yahoo has realiz ed that they should build their own search engine in order to compete with other competitors such as Google. Yahoo search has become its own web crawler-based search engine, with a reinvented crawler called Yahoo Slurp. The new search engine is being used by Yahoo in their website t hat had a web search function. After that, the relationship between Yahoo and Google has terminated. Both of the organization has become the main competitors since that year. After Yahoo has developed their own search engine, more technologies are added to the search engine in order to enhance the web sear ching experience of users. In October 2007, Yahoo search was updated with modern appearance and added Search Assist which provide real-time query suggestions and related topics as they are typed. In 2008, Yahoo added a new service to the search engine which is called Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS). This service enables the developers to create their own custom search engine. In 2009, Yahoo has integrated its search service with Microsoft which then produces the Bing search engine. (http://searchenginedirectory.biz/search-engine-histories/history-of-yahoo-search-engine/) Based on the several main events that I have mentioned, Yahoo is jumping to a new experience curve from time to time in order to enhance their search service to compete with other competitors. By upgrading the search services of the organization, a lot of visitors have been attracted to do a web search on Yahoo website. According to (Womack, 2013) , Yahoo during July 2013 surpassed Google on the number of United States visitors to its Websites for the first time since May 2011, set at 196 million United States visitors, having increased by 21% in a year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo_Search (for all the point form) The emergence of electronic tenders (customer interaction) MORE The emergence of electronic tenders is another business-to-customer strategic IT uses in Yahoo. An electronic tender is the capability to monitor a product or service using computers. Car diagnostics, package tracking and customer interactions are t he example of electronic tenders. In Yahoo, the employees have to figure out how to get close to c ustomers as customer interactions are very important in the business. There are several ways to carry out customer interaction in Yahoo. First of all, Yahoo has a service called Yahoo Shopping, a service that allows customers to access thousands of merchants and products in one place. Different t ypes of products are available in Yahoo Shopping including electronics, gifts, toys, jewelry, books and etc. Below shows the category of products that are available on the website.
Photo from https://shopping.yahoo.com Customers are able to purchase their desired products through Yahoo Shopping and it is very convenient and time saving. In order to make the purchase, customers nee d to key in information such as name, billing and shipping address, email address, tele phone number and credit card information. All these information are only accessible by the merchant and Yahoo does not see, collect, store or use these information in any way. (https://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/shopping/details.html)
Other than that, Yahoo Shopping website also offers user to provide review and feedback on variety of products. Users have to sign into Yahoo Network in order to do that. This is a great example of customer interaction that created by Yahoo. Furthermore, Yahoo has created another product called Yahoo Answers which is a knowledge sharing forum which allows users to ask, answer, comment and vote on any questions and answers, on a variety of topics through the web.(info.yahoo.com, 2014) Users can communicate using this platform and share their opinion for specific area of interest. Not only that, Yahoo News is another product that provides customer interaction in the organization. Yahoo News is providing up-to-date news to the users on the web. (info.yahoo.com, 2014) Feedback can be submitted by the users regarding the news that have posted by Yahoo on the website using the feedback form provided by Yahoo.
Working Across: Business to Business Coordinating with co-suppliers collaborating with non-competitors Based on the interview between Miya Knights and Michael Barrett, the chief information security officer at PayPal, has stated that PayPal, the online payment provider and eBay are using Yahoo anti-phishing technology to verify the authenticity of email messages to enable the user carry out the online transaction in a secure way. Through the collaboration, Yahoo ’s email authentication technology has been adopted by Paypal and Ebay to optimize the work allocation as Yahoo is the organization who can do it best.(http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5308490) Conversely, according to (anonymous, 2006), Yahoo and Ebay has f orm strategic partnership to further expand their businesses in United States. (http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.apiit.edu.my:2048/docview/445224237/fulltext/D25C79 4E486B48D8PQ/1?accountid=46052) Yahoo has selected Paypal to become the exclusive third-party provider of its online wallet to allow customer paying for Yahoo services from bank accounts, credit cards or balances associated with their PayPal accounts. Other than that, the eBay toolbar will also be integrated into Yahoo web search functionality and web site for allowing consumers to access information easier. Another incident that shown Yahoo is collaborating with non-competitors is that in 2009, Yahoo and Intel announced the Widget Channel to foster innovation in the connected TV space. Yahoo is announcing partnerships with other top consumer manufacturers including Samsung, Sony, LG to enable innovative internet and TV experience to be brought into the industry. Other than that, Yahoo has also cooperates with Intel to release the Widget Development Kit (WDK) in order to enable developers to create TV Widgets and help foster the creation of a connected TV ecosystem. In this partnership, Yahoo is combining their technology with the global distribution of major consumer electronics partners enable consumers to access the relevant information while watching television. This may enhance the TV experiences of the consumers. (http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.apiit.edu.my:2048/computing/docview/444351480/fullte xt/850F64D4BDE4443EPQ/3?accountid=46052)
Establishing close and tight relationships In the business environment, Yahoo is establishing different relationships with other organization depending on the type of business they do and the level of system integrations between Yahoo and the organization. There are three types of relationship which including: Loose relationships In this case, Yahoo provides ad hoc and limited access to internal information of the organization. The information may or may not be confidential. According to (Yahoo, 2013) , in the business highlights of the report, Yahoo has announced that the company is offering additional content as part of its partnerships with news and entertainment brands such as ABC News, adding breadth to its existing portfolio of partner content and enha ncing Yahoo’s cross-screen experiences. The relationship type between ABC News and Yahoo in this scenario can be considered as loose relationships as ABC News is the side who providing news to Yahoo and there is no internal information being accessed b y ABC News.(http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.apiit.edu.my:2048/docview/1400874477/7C5CD9 B01FA84F62PQ/5?accountid=46052) Close relationships Within the close relationships between Yahoo and other corporate organization, two of the parties exchange information in a formal manner. During the exchange of information, some of the information may be confidential and there are moder ate risks and costs within the relationships as some confidential information may exposed to their partner. According to (Info.yahoo.com, 2014), Yahoo Small Business, a service that created by Yahoo to help small business professionals and entrepreneurs successfully start, grow and manage a small business has relationships with other partners where information may be collected either by Yahoo or on a partner ’s site that is linked from Yahoo Small Business. Based on the statement, Yahoo and its partners are exchanging information in a formal manner and if Yahoo shares any personal information about user to their partner, Yahoo will provide a proper notice to the related customer and they have the opportunities to deny the transfer of information. Tight relationships
In this relationship, Yahoo and corporate organization will share at least one business process and the information is highly confidential. Thus, the risks and costs are relatively high. According to (anonymous, 2013), NetLedger Inc., a le ading provider of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application software for small and mid-sized business has announced that it has extended its agreement with Yahoo ’s Yahoo Store to provide merchants with one seamless application to manage their business process. (http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.apiit.edu.my:2048/docview/448061648/431121793BD24
1DCPQ/1?accountid=46052) Based on the agreement, NetLedger Inc. provides order .
fulfilment, credit card processing, up-to-the minute inventory, sales updates and customer service to Yahoo Store. There are several benefits from the integration of NetLedger Inc. and Yahoo Store:
the business process will be streamlined
redundant data entry will be eliminated
having access to up-to-date information
Within the tight relationships between Yahoo and NetLedger Inc, the business process es of both organizations have been shared and some confidential data such as customer credit card’s detail will be exposed to both organization. Related organization should take extra care to protect the sensitive data in order to prevent third parties have the access to the data.
Personal Evaluation
Individual Reference
References Anonymous2003, May 07. NetLedger and Yahoo Store Extend Small Business Integration Agreement. PR Newswire, 1 Anonymous2006, May 25. Yahoo and eBay Form Strategic Partnership to Further Expand Their Businesses in U.S. Business Wire, 1. Anonymous2009, Jan 09. Stockwire.com: Yahoo's (NASDAQ:YHOO) just released some important news. M2 Presswire. BUSINESS EDITORS/HIGH-TECH WRITERS, 2001, Mar 05. IntraNet Solutions Partners With Daugherty Systems to Provide Web Content Management to Global 1000 Companies . Business Wire, 1. Info.yahoo.com, (2014). Yahoo Small Business. [online] Available at: https://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/smallbiz/details.html [Accessed 10 Oct. 2014]. Info.yahoo.com, (2014). Yahoo Answers. [online] Available at: https://info.yahoo.com/privacy/uk/yahoo/answers/ [Accessed 10 Oct. 2014]. Info.yahoo.com, (2014). Yahoo News. [online] Available at: https://info.yahoo.com/privacy/uk/yahoo/news/ [Accessed 10 Oct. 2014]. Searchenginedirectory.biz, (2014). History of Yahoo Search Engine | Search Engine Directory. [online] Available at: http://searchenginedirectory.biz/search-enginehistories/history-of-yahoo-search-engine/ [Accessed 10 Oct. 2014]. Knights, M., "Profile Michael Barrett [My Way]," Information Professional , vol.4, no.6, pp.20,22, Dec.-Jan. 2007 URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5308490&isnumber=5 308479 Mitchell, B. (2014). What's an Intranet?. [online] About. Available at: http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/intranets/g/bldef_intranet.htm [Accessed 10 Oct. 2014]. Womack, B. (2013). Yahoo Tops Google for U.S Web Traffic in July, ComScore Says . [online] Bloomberg. Available at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-22/yahoo-topsgoogle-in-u-s-for-web-traffic-in-july-comscore-says.html [Accessed 10 Oct. 2014]. Yahoo Posts 2nd Quarter 2013 Results. 2013. Professional Services Close - Up, .
